I Want To Live.

Mersault

I gently rub together the fine satin tablecloth, feeling a soft grinding sensation between my thumb and index finger. The motion and monotony of this simple act goes a long way in soothing the machinations that grind and torment my mind.

After awhile a waiter approaches and asks if I'd like a drink, I ask for vodka on the rocks. With a practised and pained smile, he nods approvingly and walks off. The restaurant is buzzing with sounds one would associate with Friday night high society. Champagne glasses clink together in quiet toasts, idle laughter and conversation fill the room. Families, friends and lovers have congregated together to share in this twenty-first-century feeding ritual. One would think that given my vocation, scenes like these would somehow seem unappealing to me. That I lack the basic empathy needed to be able to appreciate human relationships. I have never found this to be true. People have come and gone. I have felt sadness, grief and longing. I have gained some, only to lose those I had. There are those that have given me comfort, those who have given me pain. I have always needed people, and I fear I always will.

The waiter again approaches carrying my drink on a silver tray. While setting down the glass he informs me that a Mr Marcel Welsh is at the front of the restaurant, asking after me. "Thanks, show him to the table" I reply. As the waiter leaves, I reach into my pocket and pull out a tiny plastic bottle filled with green and red capsules. Taking two from the bottle, I swallow them and chase it with a sip of vodka. Soon this mild dose of opioids will take effect and numb my mind, and all my cares in the world.

The man approaching my table is well dressed and appears to be in his mid-fifties. He looks as nervous as they always are, and he looks as tired as they always will.

"You're Steven? I was told to ask for Steven" asks Welsh, unsure whether he should shake my hand, take a seat or turn around run out the door.

It takes me a moment to register the alias that I provided, if this man has any sense, he's provided me with a fake name too.

"Steven, yes" I reply and gesture for him to sit.

"I'm Mitchell Welsh, although you probably already know that" say Welsh, nervously looking about and fumbling in his pockets.

He produces a torn photo of a smiling woman in her forties. The photo looks as though it's been torn down the middle.

He hands me the photo without looking at it. "This is her. Eileen. She gets home in week, two days after I've left town."

Welsh starts glancing around the restaurant, making sure he doesn't make eye contact with me. I know what he's feeling. Paranoia and fear have momentarily overcome his feelings of guilt. He's wondering why I chose to meet him in this restaurant, afraid someone he knows might see him. He wants to make our meeting as quick as possible, to leave before the waiter returns.

"Anything else?" He asks

I like meeting the people who hire me. There's a moment, you can see it in their eyes, when they know that they've sealed the fate of another person. Sentenced them to die, spoken the final word. To watch their blood run cold when handed the power over life and death. This moment of clarity allows me a window into a fundamental part of the human experience, life; then death.

"This Eileen, is she your wife?" I ask

He doesn't expect to be asked this, I watch the muscles around his mouth tighten as he becomes more nervous.

"You should know exactly who she is" says Welsh, "I mean, you're supposed to have all the necessary information. I was told you only needed to meet me face to face before you could do it."

I know very well who and what Eileen Welsh is to Marcel Welsh, and I know why he wants to have her killed. Money. He means to collect on a life insurance policy taken out by her wealthy, deceased father. It's almost always money. That or a jealous and broken heart. I try and occupy my efforts solely with family matters, meaning I avoid the criminal underworld. Criminals lack the humanity I find myself so often craving.

"I've been told that she's your wife. Now, why would a husband want his wife dead? I'm only asking to satisfy my own curiosity."

I start feeling disconnected from what's going on around me. A soft cloud of lethargy starts to settle over my head.

At this Welsh becomes indignant, he starts to sit up straight and his eyes meet mine.

"Look, I don't know what it is you're trying to get at, but I didn't come here for a moral lecture. If youre trying to ask if I understand the gravity of what we're doing here, believe me I do. Nobody understands what this is better than me. It just needs to happen."

Welsh takes a deep breath, exhales and breaks eye contact.

"It just needs to happen."

I place both my hands on the table, palms open and facing up. The liquor and pills have soothed my mind, and I've heard what I came here to hear.

"Alright mister Welsh, I'll be in contact."

With this he slowly gets up and moves toward the door.

I believe him when he says that he knows what wheels have been put into motion. He understands murder to be deplorable. He is not a violent man in any sense of the word. As mundane as it may seem, greed is the most simple and only explanation for his actions. He has hired a killer to murder his wife in cold blood. That makes him a certain kind of person. The kind of person he would never willingly choose to be, but the kind he needs to assume in order to satiate his greed. Today he is hiring a killer to murder his wife in cold blood, tomorrow he will be a very rich man without a care in the world. And really, what is it to be human if it is not always looking out for a brighter tomorrow?



Welsh

I park my car a block away from the restaurant. Paranoia gnaws at my mind. What if someone remembers seeing my car here, what if I run into someone I know, why does he insist on meeting with me and why at this particular restaurant. These are the thoughts that occupy me.

I keep telling myself that this is the final part, the final chapter of this entire, terrible ordeal. It started when Marion was first diagnosed. That was the start of an eight month stretch of nothing but waiting. We spent days, sometimes even weeks at a time, just hanging around hospital foyers and by her bedside. The doctors had told us little could be done, that all our time and efforts might only prolong the inevitable. But they were always so quick to tell us there may be a chance, faint sparks that may ignite at any time, and pull her from the blackness. These words of mercy would be sure to keep us firmly within those hospital walls, while our lives and the rest of the world just passed us by. And now she is at risk of slipping into a coma. Her illness has taken every kind of toll, on all of us. I have nothing left to give. This is the way she would have wanted it, for us to move on and rebuild. To pick up and salvage what we can, to go on without her.

Inside the restaurant is a warm and inviting atmosphere. The sounds and smells are typical for place like this on a Friday night. I approach the podium and tell the hostess I'm looking for a Steven. She smiles and runs her finger down a list of names on a register. She asks me to wait as she finds one of the waiters and whispers something into his ear.

"If you'll just wait a moment sir." She says.

I trail the waiter with my eyes as he moves toward the only table in the restaurant that has a single person seated at it. I watch as he bends over and tells him that I've arrived. The man nods to the waiter without looking in my direction. The waiter then approaches the podium where I'm still waiting.

"Please follow me sir."

Our meeting lasts no more than ten minutes, although it felt like a lifetime could have passed us by. The man who I've hired, the one going by 'Steven', seems to have asked to see me for no other reason than he wanted to meet me face-to-face. It's almost as though he only wanted to see my reaction as I personally sealed Marion's fate, it's like he wouldn't proceed before hearing the words pass my lips. I won't begin to try and understand the methodology of a man in his line of work, so I think it best just to humour him. Our meeting ends and I couldn't leave quickly enough. Gathering myself and my thoughts I slip out of the restaurant with the sense that a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. "It's all but over now" I think to myself.





Marion.

When I was a little girl I remember finding a small spider that had taken up residence in the corner of the roof in my bedroom. I would often lay back on my bed and stare at the corner of the ceiling and watch as it hung motionless from its web. I remember feeling a kind of empathy with that little spider, as we both kept incredibly still and waiting. Him waiting for that next insect to find itself tangled up in its web, me waiting for the world to sweep me up. I never remember seeing so much as a single fly being caught, he would just remain stationary, in the same exact spot until one day his legs curled up and he hung, caught in his own web. There is another time that I remember waiting. That night when dad jerked the car sharply to the left, and over a hill. I remember as the car rolled time afer time. When it finally came to a stop I remember being held upside down by my seatbelt. My father had been flung from the car, and lay dead at the bottom of the hill. I didn't know that then. I don't remember panicking or feeling scared, I don't remember screaming or struggling to free myself. I just remember keeping incredibly still while I watched the glow of the indicator illuminated the ground in a flood of orange light. I sat passively and watched the light flicker on and off, until after some time it stopped and the world around me became dark.

Where I am now, there's hardly ever darkness. The walls and ceiling are white, the tiles a pale ceramic. Bright lights radiate from the rooftop, lighting up every corner of the ward. Freshly starched sheets cover my entire body from the neck down. My mother and sister sit to either side of me, trying to make idle conversation with one another. Their words describe a world far beyond this room; they speak of the children's schooling, how erratic the weather has been of late, how difficult it is to find parking space in the hospital parking lot. But ever so often they look at me laying on my bed and they'll realise, they are trapped here too. The tide has pulled us all back, together we struggle for air, beating our arms wildly while we fight against the pull of this black ocean. But in the end only I will be drowned. Once I am pulled under, never to surface, they become free to return to their world of homework and soccer practise. They only get to leave this pale, illuminated room after I do. Only after the doctors come and raise the sheets a few inches higher. My lifeless body wheeled out on the gurney. I remain as still and silent as possible as if to tell them; "I am already dead."

I

Am

Already

Dead

My passivity sways over their entire being.



Mersault

The first man I ever killed was my own brother. Now I know what you're thinking; "This man is a stone-cold psychopath." I fully understand the gravity of fratricide, as well as the moral implications behind it. I really do. The fact remains this: No one act of killing ever supersedes another. Whether committed in self-defense, as an act of war, or murdering one's own brother; the feeling of power when taking a life is all one and the same. Perhaps some history is in order.

Some ten years ago, my brother and I had been partners in a small auto-repair business. It was just about as exciting and fulfilling as you could imagine. Neither one of us had any passion for cars, circumstances had dictated our collective lot. Our situation bred indifference, which led to apathy, which in turn gave way to apathy. This apathy would eventually lead to a strong distaste for one another. Each time we looked at each other it was as though we were staring into a mirror, reflecting one another's regrets and misspent lives.

The day on which I committed that foul and liberating act of murdering my brother, remains much a blur. It occurred in our garage. The murder was preceded by an argument over either money, work or some other trivial matter relating to our business. Either way, that is of little consequence. I clubbed him over the head with a heavy iron wrench, after which he collapsed, convulsed for a moment, then finally expired. I remember feeling a sense of shock, then, a feeling of weightlessness. My brother, and the world as I had known it, lay dead on that garage floor.

I staged the events of that day to look like an accident. Dragging his body under a lift, I collapsed a partly dismantled car over his body. It wasn't until sometime after his demise that I truly realised the weight of my actions, and the power I could hold over those around me.

My brother had been married for some time, and his passing left behind a grieving widow and two fatherless children. On the day of his funeral I watched them carefully. I watched his widow hold the children close, as they quietly sobbed. I watched as they moved among their fellow mourners, offering condolences and sharing anecdotes about the deceased. I watched all of this and I thought to myself; I did this. All of this is my creation, my doing. This world of emotion, this world of pain. I was both the architect and the builder. In a way, I was a god over their reality.

My action sways over their entire being.



Marion.

The doctors have been telling me that I am making great improvements. I'm able to sit up in my bed, my appetite is returning and I'm able to follow and hold conversations. They keep telling me that I should be grateful, that I'm truly blessed. However, the food still tastes bland, the conversation is tiresome and I prefer sleep. There is one small joy I derive from my recovering physical condition; I'm now able to stand and walk slowly toward the window, were I will stand and stare into the horizon for as long as my legs will allow. I envision myself heading toward the setting sun, never stopping, never having a place to go. Just moving away, further and further until I am completely alone. I picture everyone watching me as I become smaller in the distance, a pinprick on the horizon; until finally I am swallowed up by the yellow glow of the sun.





Welsh

I pull my coat myself as I enter the hospital lobby. The air inside is warm and inviting, the mood inside the hospital is as cold as the weather outside. The young lady behind the reception desk looks listless as I approach;

"I'm here to see my wife, Marion Welsh. She's in ward B14."

"I'll let the doctor know that you're here Mr Welsh, if you don't mind taking a seat."

She barely lifts her head from the pile of paperwork that she's occupied with.

The only other occupant in the waiting room is an elderly man, he sits hunched forward with a magazine on his lap, he doesn't appear to be reading it. I wonder to myself if he is also here visiting a loved one, perhaps also his wife. Or maybe he's simply waiting to be admitted, maybe his wife is already dead, along with all his friends and other relations. He's simply the last of his clan, fighting that battle with time that we must ultimately all succumb too.

Finally I see the doctor approaching, he smiles broadly as a shakes my hand.

"Good news Mr Welsh, your wife is still responding well to the treatments and continues to show signs of improvement. At this rate we might be looking at a full remission."

At this he stands tall and pushes out his chest, like a general announcing that he has his enemy in retreat.

"That is good news."

He smiles again and gestures for me to follow him. We make our way down the aisles, all of the doors identical, all of them closed.

"What about the existing damage to her brain? Is there still a chance she could slip into a coma?"

The doctor clears his throat before changing expression changes from proud optimism to an uncomfortable frown.

"Mr Welsh, as I explained before, the existing damage to your wife's brain in permanent. There is no way to predict or prevent any situation that may arise."

"Still, we can afford to be optimistic. She's making great strides in her recovery."

We arrive at ward B14. Before leaving, the doctor squeezes my shoulder and looks at me with an encouraging smile.

"You should be proud of your wife, Mr Welsh. This hasn't been easy for her, and she's had to fight every step of the way. Her will to live and see her family again is what has given her the strength to fight this disease. You're a lucky man, Mr Welsh, and you should be happy."

He breaks his hold on my shoulder and walks away.  His words wash over me and I feel a deep sense of knowing. He is happy because he thinks she might live. I know she will not, and the feeling of knowing this fills me with a sense of both dread and relief.

I turn the knob on the door handle and slowly open the door. The hinges